Able, ready: Aquarium festival spotlights can-do resolve

Katie Estrella dances, Dat Nguyen plays guitar and Alex Calvo scuba-dives.Estrella, a Cal State Fullerton student, can't walk. Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant living in Garden Grove, can't see. Calvo, an Army veteran from Westminster, is a quadriplegic.The three took part in adaptive demonstrations during the Aquarium of the Pacific's Festival of Human Abilities over the weekend. Groups included a sign-language choir, people who paint with their mouths and others who create art with their wheelchairs. The annual event spotlights the creative ways people adapt to life-changing disabilities."I think at first people do expect less. You think of a disability as taking something away," said Estrella. "That's what I thought first when I got injured."She was riding a new horse at age 11 when she lost control and fell. She loved dancing and practiced hip-hop and tap until that day. After, when she learned she couldn't walk, she was upset and angry for about a month. Then she changed her attitude."I can still do everything," she said. "I just need to adapt."She still rides horseback, drives and plays sled hockey. She started looking into wheelchair dance groups when she was 14 and began performing at 16."We were dancers before. And then this happened to us," she said, executing 360-degree wheelies during her performance Sunday as part of a group called Team Hot Wheelz. "Why would we let our chairs stop us?"Nguyen played his guitar Saturday at the festival, which was expected to be attended by up to 14,000 people over two days. Admission to the event was included with the standard $26 admission to the aquarium, although free tickets were offered to some disability organizations, according to the aquarium.The festival spotlights adaptive demonstrations by groups such as a sign-language choir, people who paint with their mouths and others who create art with their wheelchairs."This festival is another step forward to celebrate the talent of people who happen to be disabled," said Nguyen.Born in 1970 and blind since birth, Nguyen came to the United States in 1991. He learned to speak English upon arrival alongside high school kids who were younger and concerned with very different things. By then, Nguyen was hooked on music. First, the drum kit fascinated him, then the guitar. He's never seen a musical note, but his mind absorbs melodies."My greatest strength of memorization is melody," Nguyen said. "(People with disabilities) are not an object to be pitied. We can live a normal life."Calvo, an Army veteran who was stationed in Berlin when the wall fell, floated inside the aquarium, with turtles and fish passing around him, and enjoyed the dissipation of the otherwise constant pain in his shoulder.In 1995, while cleaning a rain gutter four stories up, he stepped on the gutter and it let out from under him. He injured his neck and has limited use of his right hand. His other limbs are motionless.Diving is one of his favorite activities, and he goes with his wife, who swam in the water with him Sunday. She's an active person, and it's one of the few activities they can enjoy together."When I'm in the water, it stretches my back," Calvo said, warming up in the sun after his dive.For a few more days, the chronic pain in his shoulder will be much less."It gives time for me to concentrate," he said.